Birth of the Tri-Oval

KEN WILLIS, Sports columnist

Sunday

Feb 10, 2008 at 12:01 AMAug 15, 2012 at 3:19 PM

The three men stood on ragged ground, with the bite of winter at hand, knowing the consolation of cold weather: The thousands of snakes, surely housed on this gnarly piece of scrubland, were tucked away until spring.

It was early in 1953, and the three men included Bill France Sr. (the dreamer), Charlie Moneypenny (the city engineer), and Dan Warren (the youthful attorney and freshly sworn-in city commissioner).

Only Warren, now in his early 80s, remains to tell the story of those earliest days of what became Daytona International Speedway.

And only Warren remains to tell us the real story of how the famed tri-oval literally took shape. Back on that cold day in '53, the three men stood alongside a hunk of concrete that lurched from the ground thick with palmettos, rock and mud -- land that stood next to the Daytona Beach International Airport and officially was part of the World War II-era Naval Air Station. To the south was an airport runway; to the north was U.S. 92; and off to the side was a relatively new Daytona Beach Kennel Club.

"Cholly," as Warren calls Moneypenny, "had us meet him out there on the property that used to be part of the old Naval Air Station, and he told Bill, 'I think you could put a track here.' "

Moneypenny especially touted the unique soil and its great drainage qualities -- soil that would later prove perfect for the stacking of highly banked turns.

The long, tall dreamer wasn't so sure. The lanky engineer, who, according to Warren, "didn't look like the genius he was," was quite certain. It's hard to imagine either of them -- the dreamer or the dead-sure engineer -- considering the possibility of what ended up taking shape on International Speedway Boulevard.

A 1-MAN COMMITTEE

Dan Warren was a recent graduate of Stetson Law School in 1952 and settled in Daytona Beach because, he swears, he and first wife Mary "were so broke, we couldn't afford to get back home to North Carolina."

As a young attorney looking for a little name recognition and contacts, he thought of a quick way to gather both -- run for City Commission. He visited News-Journal editor Herbert Davidson and discovered that his interest coincided with the interest of some influential locals who were looking to "clean house" on the city political scene, and by fall of 1952 he was elected.

Shortly thereafter, a friend named Luther Harris, who also was very friendly with Bill France and knew of Bill France's desire to move his local race from the beach to an actual speedway, approached Warren with a novel idea.

"You know, Dan," Harris told Warren, "now that you're elected city commissioner, if you could get the city to build a speedway, it would really be a feather in your hat."

"So Luther took me over to Bill's house," says Warren. "Luther lived right across from him on Goodall. He took me to meet Bill France. Bill was saying, 'You know, we're not gonna be able to race on the beach much longer. Unless someone comes forward and shows me a way I can continue racing here, I'm gonna have to move my operation.' He had already got an offer from West Palm Beach to go down there. He was seriously considering it."

So Warren went to his new mates on the City Commission, warning them the city could lose its biggest event and its sporting link to the historic speed runs of the earliest years of the 20th century.

"They appointed me a one-man committee to explore the ways to build a speedway," says Warren. "They gave me a $2,000 budget."

Thus began a parallel trip that lasted nearly five years. The city of Daytona Beach, assuming Speedway construction would cost roughly $3 million, began lining up the legalities needed to sell bonds in an effort to raise the money. Warren remembers meeting in New York City with one of the nation's top public-bond agents, John Mitchell, who would later gain a level of fame, and infamy, as Richard Nixon's attorney general.

Meanwhile France, assuming the city's financial effort might not prove fruitful, began a one-man campaign to line up private financing for his massive track.

Sometimes, it was a two-man effort. The young commissioner often accompanied France on single-engine-plane trips along the Eastern seaboard. After Warren's two-year commission term expired, he'd settled in as the first chairman of Daytona Beach's new Racing and Recreation Authority -- forerunner of the Racing and Recreation District. This role put him at France's long right arm for much of the effort.

Dan Warren was equal parts adviser, partner and one highly impressed observer. "He was the most unusual person I ever met in my life," Warren says of Big Bill. "He was the extreme optimist. He used to say, 'Everything is gonna be all right.' When things were bad, and all he'd put into it, you'd think he'd say, '... It ain't worth it. I'll go down to West Palm Beach and set up my operation down there.'

"But no, he never did. He was an extreme optimist. He had the drive and patience and intelligence to do it. The most amazing man I ever met in my life."

That sentiment was echoed by many, including Dr. Joseph Mattioli, longtime owner of Pocono (Pa.) Raceway. Mattioli has never been shy in his praise of Big Bill, a man whose advice he credits for saving the Mattioli family's racing business years ago.

"I have to be honest with you," Mattioli once said. "I know people who have bumped heads with him, who had different ideas, but personally, I never met anybody who didn't like him."

STRIKING OUT

The city money, through bond sales, was never a given, and would end up an impossibility when a bad national economic swing in the mid-'50s rendered it moot. So to build his dream track -- a track that would prove faster than the world's most famous speedway in Indianapolis -- France would need to find the money himself.

Among the sporting moguls he and Warren visited were Lou Perini, owner of the Milwaukee Braves, and Spike Briggs, owner of the Detroit Tigers. Perini didn't think the infrastructure was in place to support such a large track and potentially large crowds.

"He'd just moved the Braves from Boston because he didn't have the road infrastructure he thought he needed in Boston," Warren says.

Briggs also turned them down, but proved beneficial by providing inroads to the engineers at the nearby Ford Proving Grounds.

"All the engineering had been done to show the transition from the banks to the straightaways," says Warren. "That was a daunting task. They had already worked out all that engineering data, and they were very helpful. Cholly wanted to stay up there a few more days to talk to their engineers, while Bill and I flew back."

They had blueprints of the proposed track; they had agreed on the property; they had the desire and blessing of the city fathers. But it was becoming apparent they wouldn't have government financing through bonds, and if the Speedway dream was to come to life, Big Bill would have to eventually strike gold on his mining expeditions. He was nothing if not confident in his eventual success, and he went to the racing and recreation authority with a proposal.

"Bill came to us and said, 'If you will give us a long-term lease and give me a tax exemption from ad valorem taxes, Anne (Bill's wife) and I will get the money together and build it ourselves,' " Warren says.

"So we began the process of working on this lease. The track was extremely important to the community. At that stage in Daytona Beach, we just didn't have anything but tourism. Air conditioning really hadn't come in, so the tourist base centered around the racing in the wintertime. And West Palm Beach was really sweetening the kitty to get him down there. Bill was serious about that."

THE MILLION-DOLLAR TRACK

The city had figured it would cost $3 million to build the Speedway. And most histories of the track list that as the original cost of construction. Not true, says Warren, who launches into the story as if it happened last week.

"Bill got invited over to Pensacola for an air-power demonstration being put on by the Air Force," he says. "He was seated right next to Clint Murchison, of the Texas oil people, who would also own the Dallas Cowboys. They got acquainted with each other. Clint said he needed to get to Miami. Bill said, 'I'll fly you down there.' So en route, Bill started telling him about the track and what we were trying to do here and how he needed money."

Murchison's family owned an insurance company in Mississippi called Lamar Life. Through the insurance company, Murchison agreed to work out a $600,000 loan for his new buddy. France then set up a corporation (today's International Speedway Corp.) and sold enough shares (most at $1 apiece) to net $300,000. He and wife Annie added a final $100,000 from their own savings.

"Bill was gonna try to build that track for a million dollars," says Warren. "He worked a deal with the county to let him use their earth-moving equipment -- he'd use their equipment to do the land-clearing stuff. It was a community project, even though it would be built with private funds."

The effort ate up nearly every waking hour of 1958 for France and his construction crew, with work nearly stopping several times when funding became scarce. It was touch-and-go as the winter of 1958-59 approached. France had committed to the first Speed Weeks, knowing he'd promoted his last beach race.

"It was a challenge, but I never, never saw him down," Warren says.

Years later, son Bill France Jr. marveled at his father's perserverence during that time.

"He was like a bulldog, as far as getting something done," said Bill Jr., who died last summer. "If he hit one dead end, he'd go down another alley."

February 1959 arrived. The track was ready and open for business, and the first Speed Weeks at Daytona International Speedway culminated with the type of luck that made the effort worthwhile -- a photo finish. Big Bill, of course, nurtured the drama for three days of headlines by putting out a call for anyone with definitive photographic proof of the winner.

It all ended so well, no one could've possibly known what a close call the whole thing turned out to be.

"Now, the big day arrives in 1959," says Warren. "And Bill told me, 'if the race had been rained out, we were bankrupt.' That's how close it was."

BIRTH OF THE TRI-OVAL

Ever wonder how that tri-oval came about?

Over the years, some have suggested it was due to some brilliant idea from "Big Bill" France who figured the curved front stretch would improve the sight lines for those in the grandstands. Others thought it might've been an effort to mimic the flanking highway, U.S. 92, which seems to curve in much the same manner, basically in the same area where the front stretch dogleg is positioned.

Nope.

It was all about necessity, fueled by either pride or ego, or both.

France wanted to build a 2.5-mile track, just like the world's most famous speedway in Indianapolis, only with higher banks in the turns, which would allow drivers to keep the throttle buried a little deeper in the corners, and therefore traverse the 2.5 miles faster than they did in Indy.

France wanted -- and needed -- a faster track than Indy. That was huge back then. Miles-per-hour was a big, big deal in those days.

"That was his idea, to build a carbon copy of Indianapolis, only with higher banks," says then-City Commissioner Dan Warren, who along with France and city engineer Charlie Moneypenny was instrumental in the design of the new Speedway.

"He was set on building a two-and-a-half mile speedway. He wanted to take the speed record away from Indianapolis."

Problem was, it might not fit on the piece of property that "Cholly" (Warren's nickname for Moneypenny) was calling ideal. France and Warren went back to France's office, and France began doodling on paper.

"You could see his mind working," Warren says.

But a 2.5-mile layout just wouldn't work on that piece of property. As big as the current property off International Speedway Boulevard appears -- 350-plus acres -- it just wasn't big enough, not with an airport runway to the south and a dog track to the northwest.

And that's how the tri-oval was born.

Draw the current backstretch, and draw the current east and west corners. Then draw a straight line, as they do at, say, Indy, from the exit of Turn 4 to the entrance of Turn 1, just as the straight backstretch line from Turn 2 to Turn 3.

It's a basic speedway layout, but it would create a Daytona track of less than 2.5 miles.

It was Moneypenny, Warren says, who devised the idea of drawing an indirect line from Turn 4 to Turn 1 (the "dog-leg") that arranged a longer "line" on the front straightaway that gained the additional length necessary to reach 2.5 miles.

"Bill drew an oval, which is revealing, obviously, because Bill hadn't thought of a tri-oval," says Warren. "Moneypenny thought of the tri-oval idea. I can't say I was there when he thought of it, but I was in on the next conversation we had with Cholly, after he'd done the original sketches. He showed it to Bill that it could be done. I'm sure it was Moneypenny. It was strictly an engineering problem. And Cholly was an engineer."

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